This thoughtful question has come up within our community—one that many of us feel deeply about, and one that touches my life personally:
Do tools like AI truly belong in a nature-centered spiritual practice?
It’s a meaningful question—one that deserves reflection and honesty.
For many of us, Wicca is rooted in connection—to the earth, to the seasons, and to the rhythms of the natural world. So it makes sense that something as modern and complex as artificial intelligence might feel out of place. And yet, like so many things in our lives, the answer isn’t always simple.
There is a personal layer to this topic that I would like to share.
A few years ago, I took most of the photos featured in my books and website articles. But today, choosing images has become one of the most difficult parts of publishing.
I am legally blind, and have been for several years now. I’ve lost the ability to clearly see the details within images—the very details that help determine whether a picture feels right, natural, and aligned with the spirit of what I’m sharing.
If you’ve been a long-time newsletter subscriber, you may have noticed an extended gap between issues. During that time, I was trying to find my way forward—searching for tools that would allow me to continue writing and sharing this work.
Not long ago, I discovered AI-generated images. They’ve made it possible for me to bring visual elements into my work again—imperfect, yes, but chosen with intention. Without them, many of the articles and resources you’ve seen over the past months simply wouldn’t exist in the same way.
That doesn’t mean the concerns around AI don’t matter. They do.
Questions about environmental impact, energy use, and support for human artists are important, and they deserve ongoing attention. These are not things to dismiss—they are things to hold with awareness.
At the same time, this path I walk—like many of yours—is one of adaptation.
I’ll admit that sitting in front of a screen may not seem like the most natural way to share the magic of the earth. And yet, it’s a tool that allows me to reach out and connect with thousands of like-minded spirits I would otherwise never meet. To me, that connection is a gift—a true blessing.
Following an ancient path is not about rejecting the present world entirely. It is about living within it consciously—finding ways to stay rooted in nature while navigating the realities of modern life.
For me, using AI is not about replacing nature. It is about finding a way to continue sharing the magic of it. And as with many things in life, it’s also about finding a thoughtful balance—thus, I’ll continue looking for ways to keep my footprint lite as I move forward.
Once again, I’m grateful to be on this journey with you.
Kardia
My concern about AI is in not knowing if what I see is “the truth” or someone/some groups adaption of the truth that they want to be seen. I don’t want a person, a group of a computer program to adapt reality for me. Good, bad or ugly I want to continue to see it for myself. In seeing for myself I can grow in knowledge and understanding of reality. I do appreciate your personal use of AI. You can be trusted to not manipulate the picture to serve your own cause. However, my people and platforms cannot.
I sympathize with your dilemma. It must be very difficult indeed.
However, I have profound concerns about our future, which are only exacerbated by the tech bris, and the oligarchs behind the new technology. Ai has revealed itself to be a lurching, rapacious beast that grows stronger and more beyond our control daily. Indeed, given the recent “Hugging Face” event, it already be too late to put limits to its human-threatening potential. It gobbles up land, water, and our minds. It orders thousands of books, devours them, and then destroys the originals (five of my own novels are included in the Anthropic lawsuit). It threatens reading itself. It threatens our jobs, our already-limited security, and there is now fear it will soon destroy the body of knowledge the internet itself —already so flawed — has gathered, since our access to it may not serve AI’s goals.
And then, as the previous poster noted, it threatens our concept of reality, interfering with not only arts and sciences, the geo-politics.
On the whole, therefore, I see only disaster ahead. I will not use it. I understand it is convenient in creating images ( not to mention all the slop music and the slop books flooding the market) and may have uses, particularly in medicine. Still, on balance the overall threat is too great to ignore, and I pray we will not be seduced.
All that to say, although you can of course make your own choices, in order to live in alignment with my own principles, I regrettably no longer support any site that utilizes AI including, alas this one. Sigh.